Kids prefer contact lenses to glasses to look better

Washington, March 21 (IANS) Children wearing contact lenses feel better about their looks, their athletic abilities and acceptance by friends, than counterparts wearing glasses, researchers have said. The results of a study suggest that even eight-year-old near-sighted children reap social benefits from wearing contact lenses instead of glasses.

Eye specialists tend to wait to prescribe contact lenses until children are in their early teens. But near-sighted children often are diagnosed with myopia and receive their first corrective lenses around eight years of age.

The study was designed to examine the effects of contact lenses vis-a-vie eyeglasses on kids’ perceptions about themselves, especially what is called their global self-worth, or how valuable they think they are to society.

The research indicated that children’s global self-worth was not significantly affected by whether they wore contact lenses or eyeglasses.

Similarly, the type of vision correction had no effect on how they felt they performed in school or how they perceived their own behavior.

“The effects really seem to be in areas that we would think made sense - how they feel about their appearance, athletic abilities and what their friends think of them,” said Jeffrey Walline, assistant professor of optometry at Ohio State University (OSU) and lead author of the study.

The study was conducted at five clinical centres that enrolled a total of 484 near-sighted children between the ages of eight and 11, said an OSU release.

The research was published in March issue of Optometry and Vision Science.